


The Last Post

by Dassandre



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alpha Mycroft, Alpha Sherlock, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Future, Cybernetics, Dubious Consent, Evil Mary, Implied Mpreg, M/M, Military, Minor Character Death, Mpreg, Mycroft Being a Good Brother, Non-Linear Narrative, Omega John Watson, Omega Lestrade, Post Mpreg, Pre and Post Reichenbach, Protective Mycroft, Rape/Non-con Elements, Reichenbach Feels, Retirementlock, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-12 00:25:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3337637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dassandre/pseuds/Dassandre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The doctor had never come close to observing things in the way that came so naturally to Sherlock, but he could read people, and what he saw in the expressions of his family as they drew near caused John’s heart to stutter in his chest:  Mycroft’s countenance still and serious in a way John hadn’t seen in over a decade; Ellie’s haggard and stricken; but it was the look on Greg’s face – a look John had seen on the man countless times; a look Greg always wore when he told a parent that their pup had been killed – that had John reaching for Sherlock’s hand, gripping it tightly in his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Things I am not:  
> 1\. British  
> 2\. French (so please forgive any grammatical errors; I'm using Google translator)  
> 3\. A doctor  
> 4\. Familiar with the British Military other than what I was able to research online  
> 5\. A fan of Mary (though I rather like A.A.)
> 
> Things I am:  
> 1\. A Johnlock Shipper  
> 2\. Surprisingly okay with OmegaVerse and Mpreg  
> 3\. A fan of non-linear narratives
> 
> Please forgive any errors in either grammar or British English. I do not have a Brit-Picker and am using what I know from observation and reading other pieces on AO3 to see me through.
> 
> Kudos are fabulous, but comments and constructive feedback are LOVE! I've never delved into OmegaVerse before, and with all the fabulous OVerse that's currently out there (yes, BeautifulFiction and StarrySummerNights, I'm talking about you), I'm a bit intimidated.
> 
> This story is more about family and the sacrifices the family of those in service to their country must be prepared to make. My family has served in the American Armed Forces for three generations, and I wanted to delve into this aspect of service. I hope that I do it justice.

**Prologue**

 

_“I play the violin when I’m thinking. Sometimes I don’t talk for days on end. Would that bother you? Potential flat mates should know the worst about each other.”_

 

That was how it started, and in the initial weeks of his association with Doctor John Watson, Sherlock Holmes had proven his point, at least as far as the violin playing was concerned. In terms of not talking for ‘days on end’… well, more often than not it was ‘doesn’t shut the bloody hell up for days on end.’  Not that the doctor cared all that much, mind.  He found the consulting detective – and his brilliance – endlessly fascinating, even when Sherlock wielded his sharp tongue as a weapon of rebuke or disdain. So long as Sherlock’s weapon of choice wasn’t directed at him, John was content to point out Sherlock’s callousness to the man himself and/or apologize to others for the detective’s imperious personality.

The former soldier quickly discovered that the endless chatter and deductions were infinitely better than the huffing, puffing, and whingeing that accompanied a full-on strop, or worse yet, the unsettling silence that descended whenever Sherlock fell into a truly black mood. As their friendship grew, ‘danger nights’ became fewer and increasingly far between, but always scared Sherlock’s doctor to his core.

John Watson, though calm, warm, and affable, was largely taciturn unless questioned directly or had something specific to contribute. He spoke not to fill the air with sound but to convey a specific thought, question, or story.  He rarely ‘nattered on uselessly,’ as Sherlock called it. It is in part what made John such an excellent companion, colleague, partner – the pair never really settled on a specific title to describe John’s role in The Work – to Sherlock Holmes.

This wasn’t to say that John didn’t like people or conversation.  He did. Quite a bit in fact. He just didn’t like _all_ people.  He wasn’t one of those who needed to justify his own self-worth by the number of people he called “mate.”  It was easy to be called an acquaintance of John H. Watson.  It was much harder to be counted among his friends.

John was selective.  He was cautious.  Whether as a result of his abusive upbringing – his all-too-Alpha father had been horrified when his only son presented as a ‘useless Omega,’ – or the horrors he had witnessed and the comrades he had lost in war, John Watson was careful about whom he let into his life.  He was, as his therapist Ella once described, an ‘introverted extrovert’: Genuinely outgoing and approachable when it was called for but preferring the security of a small group of close friends or outright solitude when it came right down to it. He was rather like Sherlock Holmes in that regard, well at least once the ‘ _genuinely outgoing and approachable’_ adjectives were removed.

Unlike Sherlock, who fell silent in his darkest moods, when John fell into a true temper, people knew it. People up and down Baker Street knew it.  PCs to DCIs in the deepest bowels of New Scotland Yard knew it.  Royal Marines and insurgents across the arid basin of Helmand Province knew it.  _Everyone_ knew it.  The deeper the mood, the louder John got, the more his diction grew punctuated with invectives until every other word was a variation or combination of ‘bollocks,’ ‘sodding,’ ‘fuck,’ ‘bloody,’ and ‘arsehole’ along with their Gaelic, Pashto, and Dari equivalents.  Such storms were generally short lived, as squalls are meant to be, and were followed by words of apology and an air of awkward embarrassment.

Such was not the case with how each man dealt with grief. Sherlock had shocked everyone, including himself, when he wept openly and unapologetically during Mrs. Hudson’s funeral in 2021.  He was truly inconsolable when his father died of a sudden heart attack followed by his mother a mere 13 months later for no other apparent reason than sorrow. For the first time in his life, Sherlock found himself wholly unable to deride the idea of sentiment as a cause of death.  Its effect was apparent.

Those close to John, however, knew well how he responded to the death of a loved one.  All those except Sherlock, of course, as it had been the Alpha’s ‘death’ that had caused such a reaction in the first place. 

As both men would admit many years later, their attraction to one another started that first afternoon in the lab at St. Bart’s, but the cliché ‘emotionally constipated’ was an appalling understatement where the consulting detective and his blogger were concerned. As they learned more about each other and their friendship grew, timid touches, longing glances, and surreptitious scenting became the subconscious norm for Sherlock and John both inside and outside of 221B. 

“They’ve turned ‘eye sex’ into a sodding art form, and they don’t even know they’re doing it.  I tell you, it makes for a bloody awkward crime scene at times,” Greg Lestrade told his mate late one night, much to Mycroft’s chagrin. But even the Alpha – whose mind’s eye always painted vivid pictures and who _really_ didn’t want to imagine his little brother involved in coitus in _any_ form – could clearly see the truth of which the men in question were apparently oblivious. Soul-bonds were extremely uncommon, and only ever fully manifested as a result of a traditional mating bond between an Alpha and an Omega, but if ever the potential for such a rarity existed, Mycroft mused, it would be between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.  

Sherlock and John danced around their feelings for one another for months, at least until a psychopathic genius with a penchant for riddles, semtex vests, and swimming pools came into their lives. When John and Sherlock finally returned to 221B – high on adrenaline, relief, confusion, and fear of what they had each almost lost – the cracks in emotional wall that traditional British stoicism had erected between them strictly on principle, broke open wide and the truth spilled out of both men.  It spilled out of them against the kitchen door to the flat, with John bent over the back of his chair, Sherlock on all fours on the floor next to sitting room table, and finally – once the frenzy of long suppressed need, want, desire, and love had been tempered – slowly and tenderly with the pair twined together amidst the luxurious sheets of Sherlock’s bed.

Committed to one another though they were, Sherlock and John didn’t bond right away. John had suppressed his heats since this first year in Uni as they were simply far too inconvenient given the sheer amount of work he had to do to become a surgeon; work that certainly hadn’t diminished during his years in the RAMC or in his months as Sherlock’s blogger.   Interrupting progress on a case so that he and Sherlock could mindlessly rut against one another for five or six days was simply impractical.  Potentially fun and certainly sexy as all fuck, but impractical.  They were together.  End stop.

John’s love was of a similar mind. Biological imperative or not, Sherlock found the idea of bonding despairingly archaic.  At least at first, but Irene Adler and the dozen or so other cases they worked after Moriarty only served to bring the pair closer together yet not close enough for either man. 

After Baskerville, Sherlock and John began tentatively speaking of the years to come.  They weren’t getting any younger, and the life they led was far from safe, but what it would mean if they continued to live without the tie of the bond and all it represented?  While their friends and family recognized their status as mates without the mark and the scent of a bonded pair, the government and the NHS didn’t.    Nor did the scores of alphas, omegas, and even betas that continued to chat up either Sherlock or John on a regular basis.  Sherlock found it all annoyingly tedious and dull.  John found it bloody well rude.  Neither of them would ever commit to a bond simply because it was the social norm, but when one rainy afternoon in mid-March Sherlock shyly brought up the topic of children, the pair knew that the time had come.   Though it could take months for John’s reproductive system to purge itself of the hormones it had absorbed for over 20 years, John stopped taking his suppressants that night.

Three days later, James Moriarty simultaneously broke into The Tower of London, unlocked the cells at Pentonville Prison, and opened the vault at the Bank of London.  Thoughts and plans for the future would have to wait.

Moriarty’s ‘Trial of the Century’ trial took the spotlight at Old Bailey, then ‘Richard Brook’ and Kitty Riley tag-teamed with one another to ruin Sherlock career and reputation.  By the time the doctor found himself kneeling, horror-stricken and numb next to the bloody, broken body of the man he loved, John still had not had a heat.  Nonetheless, John’s mind and body responded to Sherlock’s death as though the absent chemical and emotional connection had been ripped from his very soul. 

John’s Omega biology reasserted itself a week after Sherlock’s funeral. 

He spent the first day of his unexpected heat alone in the bedroom he had shared with Sherlock, his needy body lusting after the Alpha that he would never hold again.  John begged and pleaded for Sherlock to come back, to give him one more miracle, to fill his body as well as the cracks in his heart. 

When the lust subsided long enough for his ‘sensible’ self to return, John’s begging turned to screaming. Greg arrived 10 minutes after Mrs. Hudson’s frantic call and collected John from 221B.  The doctor spent the next four days blissfully unconscious in a Heat Room in Mycroft and Greg’s Belgravia town home where a trio of beta nurses monitored him around the clock.

John stayed in Belgravia for three months with Greg as his near constant companion; the Omega copper had been placed on administrative leave pending the results of the investigation into the DI’s cases on which Sherlock had consulted.  Mycroft and Greg did the best they could to help John work through his grief and begin living again – he patently refused to see Ella again after she all but forced him to give voice to the reality of Sherlock’s death – though all three knew John was mostly just going through the motions.

Mycroft was particularly solicitous and eschewed what Greg referred to his ‘overbearing git’ façade whenever the doctor was present in the room.

“He’s family,” Mycroft replied simply when Greg questioned him about his atypical concern. 

Greg got the distinct impression that there was more to it than that, but an ill-timed coup in southern Chile pulled Mycroft back to work, and Greg’s ‘impression’ was forgotten about for more than two years.

At the beginning of September, John returned to Baker Street where Mrs. Hudson kept him occupied during the day with crap telly, baking lessons, and the ~~more than~~ occasional herbal soother. At night, John read through all of the old case files Sherlock had kept in storage down in 221C.

The boxes went back 23 years, all the way to 1989.  His first night back in Baker Street, unable to face the bedroom he had shared with Sherlock, John picked the lock on “C” and made his choices with care. Nothing from the last two years. Nothing they had worked on together. It just … hurt too much. It was the same reason John had closed out his blog. 

He decided to begin at the beginning and picked up four of the 15 boxes, stacked one on top of the other. John’s leg seized with pain halfway up the 17 stairs, and he nearly fell, the containers tipping precariously until he righted himself.  John glared at the offending limb as though it had betrayed him as he had done Sherlock by abandoning him at Bart’s. 

John wasn’t sure how long he stood there caught between the stairs and his guilt, but he eventually found himself on the floor in front of the sofa, the oldest box at his side. Though Sherlock couldn’t have been arsed to keep the kitchen or sitting room clutter free, Sherlock had organized his files the way he had ordered his experiments and his mind: meticulously and methodically.

John’s hand hovered over the file at the back of the box, the pads of his finger barely brushing against the slightly frayed tab of the stiff folder, its label carefully inked in Sherlock’s tidy script: Case Number:  001; Carl Eugene Powers.  There was little in the file, at least in comparison to what he knew existed in the more recent ones, but even John, who was “not the most luminous of people”, could easily see the signs of brilliant career in the making. Skeptics like Donovan and Anderson would have expected the files that followed to be filled with incidents of missing neighborhood pets or stolen lunch money, things that the average pre-teen would consider important enough to worry about.  John knew better. Even now, even still, John was a believer.

In the twelve months following Carl Power’s death, Sherlock investigated two homicides originally determined by the local constabulary to be a murder/suicide; a baker’s assistant embezzling funds to purchase illegal cannabis that he baked into biscuits after his boss closed up at night then selling them out of the boot of his car at popular clubs on the weekends; the theft of a rare volume of Goethe’s _Faust_ from the private collection of the local MP; and he unearthed the evidence that the vicar’s two dogs had been poisoned by the caretaker who had tired of picking up the animals’ droppings from the around the vicarage’s garden.

Sherlock’s personal notes on each case more than hinted at his frustration at not being taken seriously by the police. Thankfully Sherlock’s parents – particularly his father – would intercede on his behalf, but Sherlock’s methods and their results were always met with skepticism or outright derision, even after the young boy had been proven right. 

That was the first of many nights where John drifted off on the sofa, file folders clasped to his chest, tears seeping through closed lids even as he slept.  He finished the first four boxes of Sherlock’s past in one week and tried to find the energy during the day to look ahead to his own future. He didn’t know what that even meant.

By the end of September, John was rushed to A&E at Royal London in a near catatonic state. Anthea had found him on the floor next to Sherlock’s chair.  She had dropped by at Mycroft’s behest to obtain John’s signature on the documents that would release the first portion of Sherlock assets to the doctor’s accounts.

John had lost nearly a stone, was anemic and dehydrated, and close to collapsing from exhaustion; all of which could be attributed to grief, but Mycroft insisted that further tests be conducted. Nothing should be ruled out. Ultimately Mycroft’s tenacity would both save John’s life and alter it irrevocably: blood tests revealed that John’s endocrine system was nearing a full collapse. 

Suppressant Toxicity was relatively rare among Omegas but almost always fatal unless treated quickly. John was put on an intense regime of fluids and dialysis to help his weakened kidneys purge the toxic levels of suppressants. John had resumed the medication after what should have been his bonding heat to Sherlock, but his body had rejected the very chemicals and hormones that John had relied upon for decades, allowing them to build up in his body until they, as well as the hormones John’s body naturally produced, were essentially poisoning him.

John recovered quickly, but he could never take suppressants again.  Even chemical birth control was risky but doable if monitored carefully. For an Omega who had only experienced three heats in his adult life, the thought of enduring a heat every two months with no recourse was unbearable.  Greg tentatively suggested that John make arrangements with an Omega House where sterilized Alphas or male Betas would tend to an Omega in heat without the risk of bonding or breeding.  John nearly vomited at the thought of anyone touching him in such a way either in or out of a heat.  So when his heat approached in mid-October and again just before Christmas, John returned to Belgravia and the Heat Room in Mycroft and Greg’s town home.  Awkward though it was, John was grateful that he had someplace safe to see out his heats alone.

John always returned to Baker Street when the lust and primal needs faded, but each time it felt as though he was leaving a little bit of his soul behind; the bit that needed Sherlock to feel complete. Eventually even the case files failed to fill that void and by the end of 2012, even ‘going through the motions’ became too hard.

Another frantic call from Mrs. Hudson just after the New Year, and Greg was there, prying John’s SIG from his trembling hands.

John moved out of Baker Street the next day.


	2. News from the Front

**April 2047 – Belgravia, London, England**

 

It was the memory of John’s dark time so many years ago that had Mycroft reaching for the vid screen the moment the news from Australia reached him through private channels.  His first hurried call was to the MoD; his second rang to a much more private office hidden in the depths of Whitehall.

Though he had retired from his ‘minor position’ in the British Government five years prior, Mycroft Holmes was still kept in the know from a variety of sources, not the least of which was his eldest daughter, Sophia who, with her cousin Eleanor as her redoubtable PA, now held the same position her sire once had done.

“Compared to the supply depot at Alice Springs, the base at Ruby Gap was small and of little strategic value: X Company of the Fifth Northumberland; A Coy, 40 Commando of the Royal Marines; four platoons from the 24 Commando Engineer Regiment; 91 medical and support personnel for the field hospital; 62 patients. Intelligence indicates that the rebels attacked with the sole purpose of taking out the hospital in an attempt to demoralize the allied forces in the area,” Sophia Lestrade-Holmes said referring to the report in her hand. 

Greg gasped in shock.  There weren’t many rules in war, but deliberately attacking a hospital displaying the Red Cross was one of them.

Mycroft reached for his mate’s hand and squeezed it in an effort to comfort the Omega. “Gregory, these insurgents have proven on more than one occasion that they care little about who or what they attack. They’ve treated the ‘laws of war’ as the baby that has gone out with the bath water, I’m afraid.”

“Too true,” Sophia flipped through a second file that Eleanor placed in front of her, quickly scanning its contents, though she spared a quick, sympathetic look for her cousin, “but they seriously underestimated the tenacity of the British Military for all they were outnumbered three to one. Twenty-seven of the wounded recovering in hospital as well as 62 Marines, 44 soldiers, and three members of the medical staff all had cybernetic implants.  If the device had gone off …”

Sophia returned her gaze to meet that of her sire and dad.  “I am understating when I say that the bravery and skill demonstrated earlier today brings honour to us all. It was a significant and decisive victory; one that we quite simply would _not_ have won if not for …” 

They all knew why. Sophia had screened them the details of what the MoD was already calling ‘The Battle of Hale River’.

“It was also _very_ public for all that Ruby Gap is still at the other end of nowhere. The media will become an issue quickly. Ellie and her people are quashing the details as best they can for the time being, but this victory could change the course of the Australian Conflict and given the particular personnel involved, something will leak and it will happen _soon_.”

“The JCCC will send someone out to the cottage as a matter of protocol, Uncle,” Eleanor Watson-Holmes added to the discussion. “They likely have a Casualty Notification Officer waiting in Eastbourne for final confirmation on the identity before going out.” 

“They can’t hear this from a CN Officer, Myc,” her dad insisted.  Greg Lestrade sat on the sofa next to her father, as much a part of the conversation as he ever was. Sophia could see tears in his eyes. “Especially not John.”  Other than her Uncle Sherlock, Greg was John Watson’s closest friend and had been there all those years ago when Uncle John had tried to recover from Sherlock’s death.

“No.  They cannot,” Mycroft agreed.  “The results would be most unfortunate, I fear.  How long before the JCCC begins to insist upon involving themselves, my dear?”

“I can hold them off for another three hours, four at most,” Ellie said, “but it’s not so much the JCCC that’s the issue –“

“It’s the media,” Greg banged his cane on the floor in frustration, his eighty years having done nothing to diminish his passion when it came to those he loved and called family. “Always the bloody media. They’re going to drag it all up again, Myc.  You know that.”

Mycroft did know.  Though over thirty years had passed since Sherlock Holmes had returned from the dead to London and John Watson in a manner nearly as dramatic as his ‘suicide’ had been, the media, and indeed the whole of Britain, still clamored for every bit of news that the pair generated.  This would be no different and would likely be the most sensational news yet if press had anything to say about it.

“Have a helicopter waiting at the usual airfield in 25 minutes,” Mycroft told his daughter.  “Gregory and I will fly down to the cottage and deliver the news ourselves. Eleanor would be a comfort, too, I’d imagine.”

Sophia nodded and shuffled through more files on her desk. “Ellie’s done all she can from here.  She and ‘Liv will keep things on an even keel until the boys can get home.  I’ll contact Will and Liam in person once you’ve spoken to Uncle Sherlock and Uncle John. I’ve Dr. Shah on call, too. Shall I have her meet you at the airfield?”

Mycroft thought about that for a moment, then nodded.  “Yes. A wise precaution, Sophia, given the circumstances, but one of which I hope we have no need. Thank you for thinking of it.”

Greg noted that while his daughter appeared outwardly calm, the slight tremor in her hand as she tucked a stray dark curl behind her ear, the absent way in which she chewed her bottom lip, and even the atypical deepening of her voice as she rattled off the intel were all signs that Sophia was working hard to control her emotions.

“Soph,” Greg said softly, just as his daughter was about to end the vid call.  He reached over Mycroft’s hands that held the tablet and touched the image of her face on the screen.  Though it still sometimes surprised him how many of Sherlock’s physical traits genetics had thrown her way, Sophia was truly her sire’s daughter which meant that occasionally Greg had to remind her that it was okay to _feel,_ especially now.  This was family, after all.  It was a lesson that had taken Mycroft nearly 15 years to fully learn, but Greg was nothing if not a patient teacher.  “Everything will be okay.  We’ll get through this together.  We love you.”

Sophia swallowed tightly and nodded. “I know, Dad,” she said with a sad smile before severing the connection.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember to feed your author with kudos and comments. We hunger! :)


	3. Before the Devastation

 

 

**April, 2047 – Outside East Dean, Sussex, England**

 

It had been a wet spring. Nothing terribly atypical, but four days of steady, heavy rain had left John worrying about the leaks in the roof of the old cottage that had needed fixing a year past.  Sherlock had been as stroppy as the weather, fretting about his bees that were quiet in their hives, and comparing this year’s hive activity with the data he had been collecting for the twenty-three years they had been living at Holmes’ Cottage. 

 

The property had been left to Mycroft and Sherlock equally after the death of their mother, Violet, but Mycroft and Greg had felt no desire to leave London.  Neither had Sherlock and John, initially, but a freak encounter with a suspect in the interrogation room at New Scotland Yard changed all that.

 

The kidnapping suspect, a bloody Beta high on cocaine, had broken away from his handlers as he was being escorted out of the room.  John reacted instinctively to stop him and was viciously flung into the doorjamb and then to the floor for his efforts. The attack on the much loved Omega had spurred the protective instinct of both Alphas in the room, and it had taken five constables to pull Sherlock and Donovan off the man while Lestrade tended to John.

 

The collision was so violent that John ultimately miscarried one of the twin pups he had been carrying at the time. Once their son, Andrew, had been buried and the immediate grief had somewhat eased, discussions and arguments were had, choices and arrangements were made, and as soon as John was well enough to travel, Sherlock moved his beloved, and their brood of five – soon to be six – and the nanny to Sussex.   The risks of The Work outweighed the rewards in Sherlock’s mind, and he would not jeopardize John or any of their pups again.  The time had come for something new.

 

Their years in the 12-room red cottage weren’t quite retirement but neither were they just about raising their pups. Sherlock consulted for private clients with a degree of frequency and, on occasion, for the local constabulary, but as he grew older, the detective developed his fascination for and study of apiculture into an extremely profitable business selling artisan honey, organic beeswax, and medical grade bee venom.

 

John kept his hand in medicine by working locum shifts at a small surgery in East Dean, but he mostly focused on his writing. John had published two collections of short stories and three novels based on the adventures he had shared with Sherlock as well as two pieces of original military fiction – best sellers, the both of them – that _The Times_ and _The Guardian_ touted as ‘brilliant’ and Sherlock assessed as ‘tolerable.’  

 

Anna, Will, Jacob, Liam, and Eleanor grew up and moved away as children are wont to do.  Sherlock and John’s youngest, Olivia, continued to live with her sire and dad in the cottage, taking as much care of them as she did the seven-year olds at the local primary school at which she taught.

 

“Never thought I’d be a father let alone a grandfather, John,” Sherlock said to his mate when little Abigail was placed in his arms mere moments after their eldest, Anna, had given birth six years ago.  Liam delivered himself of wee Isobel amidst great fan fair two years ago, and Will’s mate Callum presented him with John William (J.W.) and Scott Hamish a mere three months after that. It was Ellie, however, who would soon put her siblings to shame with triplets scheduled to arrive before the end of the year.

 

Her Alpha, Michael, was so puffed up with pride that he shared – often loudly and with anyone who would listen – the intimate details of the heat in which Ellie’s womb quickened with his brood. It finally reached the point that the young man had be pulled aside what should have been an ‘Alpha to Alpha talk’, but as Sherlock couldn’t be arsed to get involved himself, the task fell to John who explained in painstaking detail what would happen to Michael should he continue to embarrass Ellie in such a public fashion.

 

Unfortunately for Michael, his Alpha nature got the better of him during the chat with his mate’s mum, and the phrase “but you’re just an old Omega,” fell from his lips, so John had little choice but to provide the young man a brief but pointed example of what John had meant.

 

To John’s consternation, Michael was able to draw sufficient breath to climb unsteadily back to his feet and walk stiffly and painfully back to the cottage a mere ten minutes later.  It used to take three times as long for a suspect to recover once John set him down, but John _was_ 73 now, and he had to accept that he just couldn’t do all the things he could thirty years ago, chasing down criminals through the streets of London at Sherlock’s side. 

 

_“Don’t worry, Mike.  Everything will be in working order again long before the pups arrive,” John reassured him with a friendly pat on the back as they crossed through the back garden that was just starting to bloom with asters, freesia, phlox, sweet peas, and tulips._

_Sherlock didn’t bother to hide his smile as he watched them come up the path._

_“I suppose it was bound to happen to one of them,” Sherlock said later as he leaned against the door to the kitchen, watching as Ellie prepared an icepack for her Alpha’s bruised ego._

_“What was, love?”  John looked up from the book he was reading in his chair next to the large window in the sitting room._

_“One of them was bound to bond to an idiot.”  Sherlock’s sigh was equal parts consternation and exasperation with a bit of dissatisfaction thrown in for good measure._

_“Michael’s not an idiot, Sherlock.  He’s a 26-year-old Alpha whose mate is expecting his first pups.  Think about what you were like at that age.” John assessed his mate over the rims of his reading spectacles.  “On second thought, you probably deleted it.”_

_“I was never like that!” Sherlock insisted, pointing at the ginger Alpha slumped at the kitchen table.  With a swirl of his dressing gown Sherlock abandoned his post and dropped into his love’s lap, a touch of arthritis requiring a far more controlled descent than once he would have done.  John grunted at the unexpected weight and set his book aside, curling his arms around Sherlock’s still trim waist._

_“No, you were probably worse.”  John slipped several of the buttons of Sherlock’s shirt free of their holes and slid his hand past the fine cotton to caress the soft skin along his mate’s ribs just above the waistline.  “Remember, I know what you were like as a 33 year-old Alpha when we first met to say nothing about what you were like at 39 when you finally got me up the duff with quadruplets.”_

_Sherlock harrumphed in irritation but snuggled in close to John anyway. “Well, there’s still hope, I suppose,” Sherlock muttered into the crook of John’s neck. He nuzzled and kissed the bonding bite he had placed there decades ago._

_“How so?”  John carded his fingers through Sherlock’s salt and pepper curls, tipping his head to the side to give Sherlock greater access to the sensitive flesh._

_“Jacob and Liv are both single.  Still a better than average chance they’ll find sensible Omegas to bond with.”_

_John laughed and kissed Sherlock’s forehead.  “You’re such an arse.”_

_“Yes, but I’m_ your _arse,” Sherlock retorted before capturing John’s lips for a deep, searching kiss that left them both breathless and wanting more. “And one who still finds it unbearably arousing when you unleash_ Captain _Watson on the unsuspecting masses.”_

_John pulled his eyes from Sherlock’s lips to look suspiciously at his mate. “You sneaky bastard,” he said after a moment. Sherlock smirked at the sudden clarity of understanding that spread across John’s face.  “That’s why you wouldn’t talk to Michael!  You get off on watching me turn into a ...a – “_

_“Bad-ass, mother-fucker?” Sherlock supplied.  "Bit of an antiquated term, I admit, but no less accurate or affecting.  After all these years, this particular kink can't_ possibly _be shocking to you, John.” He nipped and sucked at John’s earlobe and ground his bottom suggestively against John’s groin which flared to life at the intimation that Sherlock was up for a bit of Alpha/Omega role reversal. “It’s a lovely day. I think the children would appreciate some time in town, don’t you?”  With a wink and a salacious smile, the surprisingly still-nimble Sherlock hopped off John’s lap and scampered upstairs to the master suite they shared._

_John managed to talk Liv and Ellie into taking Michael into the village to drown his pain at The Star and Garter before taking the stairs two at a time – he had paid for that later – to join his mate where the pair spent the rest of the afternoon making love._

 

John smiled at the memory of their limbs tangled together amidst the sex-stained, 800-thread count sheets and turned his face to the warmth of the sun that hadn’t been seen for days.

 

Grey skies laden with rain had finally cleared late last night and the makings of a pleasant spring day had greeted John, Sherlock, and Olivia as they headed out of the cottage just after dawn, each with their own tasks to complete as they inspected the property for damage. There was much to do, and little time in which to do it.  Another lengthy storm was forecast in two days.

 

Sherlock had gone immediately to his bees, checking the numerous hives for damage while the creatures stayed snuggled in close together, keeping warm in the early morning damp.

 

Olivia headed to the large, aged barn that had been converted for Sherlock’s entrepreneurial enterprises.  Strong winds had shaken loose numerous shutters and flying debris resulted in several broken windows.  Hopefully any water damage to supplies, machinery, and inventory was minimal, but when last John saw her, Liv was already on her mobile with their insurance broker.  

 

John’s task was to take stock of any damage done to the rest of the land.   The property was significant, though it represented only a small portion of what had once been a much larger estate.  Like so many of the aristocracy had done after The Great War, Sherlock’s great-grandparents had been forced to sell off most of the land as well as Sherrinford Hall to cover decades worth of poor investments and extravagant living.

 

Though the family retained its title, the Holmes’ lived in what everyone but John considered reduced circumstances at Holmes Grange until Siger, Mycroft and Sherlock’s father – the self-described ‘moron’ – had obtained a patent for a new engine governor he had invented while tinkering in the barn after Violet had banished him from their bedroom during the last month of her pregnancy with Mycroft.  Siger’s ‘tinkering’ only revolutionized train and tube travel throughout the UK and abroad.

 

During fair weather, John was able to walk the property in just under two hours.  Today, however, he knew it could take at least half again as long. Gladstone – the second of her name – trotted at John’s side as much for companionship as for assistance. Like an increasing number of veterans who had served in the Afghanistan Campaign, John had developed a seizure disorder 12 years past, and the yellow Labrador Retriever had been specially trained to recognize the signs of an oncoming event so that John could prepare himself lest he fall and injure himself.  Gladdy was further trained to stay at her master’s side and bark until such time as help arrived, usually in the form of Sherlock or Liv. Medication and a cybernetic rheostat implanted behind his right ear kept John’s condition largely in check – he’d suffered only two minor events in the last year – but the Gladstones had given John back the sense of independence that John feared he had lost after his diagnosis.

 

Thankfully the southern end of the estate – which normally took heavy damage from wind, rain, _and_ sea during such storms – had suffered little this time ‘round. It would be but the work of a few hours to clean up the flotsam and jetsam the sea had vomited up on the shore.   Erosion was a constant concern for those who lived along the Downs, but unlike many properties where the land terminated in a sheer drop of hundreds of meters to the rocks below, Sherlock and John’s ended with a gentle slope down to the sandy coastline. It had made for easy access to the beach when the pups were younger, but the destruction that a single storm could wreak on the land was as awe-inspiring as it could be devastating.

 

The eastern and northern borders had likewise escaped serious damage, though a dozen or so of the 50 English Elm and Oak saplings John, Will, Jake, and Liam had planted together last July had been torn up by the wind once the soil grew too wet for the roots to hang on.

 

Now _that_ had been a good day.  John smiled at the memory.  All his boys together for the first time in ages. Jake was home on a brief spot of leave before he deployed to Australia; the Royal Marine had recently been promoted to Captain and would take his role as second in command of A Coy, 40 Commando when he arrived in Adelaide, and the whole Watson-Holmes clan – save Anna who was herself deployed with the RAMC to Malaysia trying to help quash a Cholera outbreak – came home to see him off. 

 

They had worked hard that day, but the strenuous work of digging and lifting had been broken up with humorous stories and memories from the boys’ youth – Lord, had they been scamps! – as well as several new tales that John felt his pups were old enough to finally appreciate: ribald stories from his time in the RAMC as well as his early life with Sherlock and The Work. Stories from before the darkness of Moriarty and Sherlock’s Fall and Mary and Moran. 

 

There had been so much laughter that day, and John was extremely pleased when, in the late afternoon, the rest of the family joined them at the windbreak with all that was needed for tea.

 

_John sipped his tea against the trunk of an ancient oak, Gladdy asleep with her head on her paws beside him.  Sherlock rested his head on John’s legs, inspecting a ladybug that had alighted on the his hand a few minutes ago.  Sherlock twisted his wrist this way and that as the insect explored her new terrain, attempting to keep the creature from falling off and disappearing into the grass.   John chuckled and ran his fingers affectionately through his mate’s curls._

_It hadn’t always been this way.  This sense of calm satisfaction.  John had lost track of the number of times this brood had nearly driven him ‘round the twist with their fighting, their pranks, and their fool-hearty escapades that – while not nearly as insane as the scrapes he and Sherlock had found themselves in – had been more than enough to cause John to seriously worry whether or not each of them would live to see adulthood.  Killed either by their foolishness or his hand._

_Though Sherlock was the Alpha, it had been John who largely dealt with disciplinary issues.  Sherlock felt that John’s time as a soldier ‘more than qualified’ him for the task, but John knew the truth of the matter.  Sherlock was extremely sentimental when it came to his pups and struggled to fault them for their ‘insatiable curiosity’ and ‘sense of adventure.’ It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, he simply … couldn’t.  He_ always _caved._

 

_“They are, after all,_ our _pups, John,” Sherlock had said on more than one occasion.  “Did you really expect them to be boring and wooden like Mycroft?” John found that he never could come up with a decent argument against that point._

_John took in the scene of familial harmony that was laid out on the hillside around him.   The newly bonded Ellie and Michael cuddled together on a blanket far enough down the hill to keep their lovers’ conversation private but not so far that they isolated themselves from the rest of the group, though John seriously doubted they were aware of anyone other than themselves anyway.  Sherlock and John’s post-bonding bliss had been radically different from the haze of hormones and happiness that typically enveloped the newly bonded, so part of John was gratified to see his daughter as the sole focus of the man in her arms.  The other part wanted to rip Michael to shreds as the former soldier was convinced no Alpha was good enough for his beloved daughter._

_Jake and Liv chatted amiably for once – their relationship was far too much like the one that had existed between Sherlock and Mycroft before Sherlock’s return – at least until Liv started throwing smashed grapes at her brother’s face who retaliated with several well-aimed squirts from his water bottle. Liv’s shrieks of anger echoed back up the hill as she ran from the Marine._

_Will, Callum, Liam, and Liam’s Evie lounged together in the grass in a rough circle off to John’s left discussing parenting techniques, Liam’s upcoming concert tour, and the string of serial killings that Will and his team at the Yard had finally solved.  Their three wee pups crawled and toddled around on a soft blanket in the center of their parents’ conversation; every time a pup tried to make a break for it – Isobel was particularly daring – one of the adults would instinctively scoop them back in with a hand or a foot, never once breaking the conversation with the others._

_John couldn’t help but be impressed.  Though his memories were as crisp and clear as they had always been, John was pretty certain neither he nor Sherlock had been that composed when their pups were that young.  Granted, there was a significant difference between raising a single pup or a pair versus the quadruplets John had delivered when Anna was still a toddler herself. Nanny or not, John supposed Sherlock and he could be forgiven any serious missteps they might have made in the beginning._

_“Grandpè_ _re!  Grandpè_ _re!”  Gladdy woofed a greeting to six-year-old Abigail who scampered up the hill, all knees and elbows, to Sherlock’s side.  “Regardez ce que je ai trouv_ _é_ _!”_

_Ladybug forgotten, Sherlock turned his full attention to the four foot blonde who slid into his lap.  “Montrez-moi, petit moineau.”  All of the Watson-Holmes brood were fluent in French and Pashto, and those with children planned to continue the tradition; nevertheless, Abby was unusually proficient for her age._

_Abby thrust her closed fist into Sherlock’s face and opened it slowly, palm up, with what John could only term as ‘great fanfare.’  Always with the big reveal were the Holmes’._

_“Qu’Est-ce que c’est?” Abby asked, brows quirking in contemplation. She was filthy. More hair hung out of her French plait than remained in it.  She was covered in dirt and mud; John could readily see that the jeans she wore would ever be clean again, so deep were the grass stains on her knees._

_“Vous connaissez mes methods,” Sherlock replied.  “D_ _é_ _duire.”_

_Abby observed the item in her hand carefully for several moments before she shyly began sharing her thoughts with her grandpè_ _re who in turn offered words of encouragement when she was accurate and gentle corrections when she wasn’t. Oh, how Sherlock had mellowed with the years!_

_Finally she reached the right conclusion.  “Ce est un foss … un foss …” Abby lacked the word, so Sherlock provided it for her._

_“Ce est un fossile.  Oui, mon moineau.” In English, Sherlock rattled off all he knew about_ Parasmilia _coral and what the Downs would have looked like millions of years ago when it was underwater._

_“Can I keep it?”   Abby asked, staring breathlessly at the small flint nodule that held the fossilized imprint of the coral._

_“You’ll have to ask Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Liam as you’re staying with them until Mummy returns, but I think they can be persuaded to find a spot in your bedroom for your fossil.”  Sherlock tugged on the end of Abby’s ragged plait._

_“Next month when you’re here on holiday, Grandp_ _è_ _re and I will take you on a fossil hunt in Peacehaven,” John said and was rewarded with a squeal of delight. He had just enough time to brace against the tree trunk before Abby launched herself off of Sherlock’s lap into John’s own.  Tiny arms wrapped tightly about his neck, she gave John a messy kiss on the cheek.  He was delighted!_

_“Merci, Gran’da!  I love you!”_

_“I love you, too, poppet,” he whispered against her soft hair. “Now off you pop to your Auntie. Show her what you found.” He gave Abby an affectionate swat on her bottom and sighed with contentment as the girl scrambled off to her aunt._

_“You’re happy.”  Sherlock rolled up on an elbow to face John. His eyes were green today, and John bent to press a tender kiss to each lid.  He loved green days._

_“Deduced that, did you?”_

_Sherlock chuckled. “Hardly required me to expend_ that _much energy. You’re always happiest when they’re all here.” He traced each button of John’s sweat-stained shirt with a long finger.   They each had a thing for buttons, or rather they each had a thing for_ undoing _buttons._

_John’s smile fell, but just a fraction.  “Well, almost all.”  He tangled his fingers in the short fur at the scruff of Gladdy’s neck and massaged the loose flesh there as he thought of his eldest daughter. It comforted him, petting the warm fur. The dog huffed twice, and nestled in closer to her master’s side before closing her eyes again._

_“I miss her too, John.  More than I should, perhaps,” Sherlock said, dropping his eyes from his mate’s as he always did when wrestling with complex emotions.  Having suppressed them for as long as he had, Sherlock was often very shy and tentative about how he expressed them now, but at least he talked his way through them.  If there had been one serious sticking point in their early years, even before they bonded, it was Sherlock and John’s inability to talk through the difficult feelings. John wasn’t the only one who had to work through trust issues. “You tried to explain to me what it was going to be like, this military life lark, but between the telling of it and the living with it … Well, it’s all together different, isn’t it?  And now with Jacob going out to a war zone …”_

_“Anna will be here at Christmas, love, and then it’s only another six months before she’s home for good.  And Jake, Jake’s a good Marine.  One of the best in His Majesty’s service to hear his CO tell it –“_

_“Not that you’d know it from the way he’s currently throwing dirt at his sister,” Sherlock muttered about his second-eldest son._

_“ –_ and _, ” John stressed, moving past the interruption, “he’s one of the best men I know. It’s war.  It’s dangerous.  He could be killed or injured, yes, but he’s your son, Sherlock. Through and through. From his curly hair to his mind palace, add to that his training, and that boy’s got everything he needs to make it through this war.”_

_“Probably even has how to disarm a bomb tucked away in there, someplace.” Sherlock still didn’t sound convinced by the reassurances, but John could tell that the surge of melancholy in his love’s tone was starting to subside._

_“The man wears the green beret of a Royal Marine commando, Sherlock. I bloody well guarantee he’s got how to disarm a bomb in that head of his.”_

_Sherlock rolled back over and again settled his head, this time in John’s lap. He closed his eyes, sorting through what John had said.  After a few minutes John felt Sherlock’s breathing even out as the man relaxed into sleep. John carded his fingers through Sherlock’s hair as he often did, watching the afternoon sunlight dance between the fat leaves of the oak above. He let the laughter and the giggles and the bickering and the tentative whines of puppy dreams and the murmured words of new love wrap around him._

_It wasn’t perfect.  John didn’t trust perfect, but it was as damn close thing._

 

He looked again at the felled saplings with their torn roots and bark stripped off by the very support posts meant to stabilize them.  John blamed himself more than the storm for the damage. Clearly they hadn’t dug those holes deeply enough when they were planted.  A sad, belated end stop on what had otherwise been a glorious day.  John tapped Gladdy’s side with his walking stick, and the pair moved on.

 

The western boundary was another story altogether.  The usually gently flowing creek that separated their land from the Carmichaels’ was a swollen torrent of rushing water.   It had overflowed its steep banks and in several places had broken through the low, stone wall that separated the creek from the garden of annuals that Sherlock, Olivia, and Will’s Callum, had planted just a fortnight ago. John’s heart dropped at the sight of the destruction.  Sherlock had tended these seedlings in the greenhouse all winter long so that they stood a better chance against the unpredictability of the spring weather. All of their work, a season’s worth of nurturing and a week’s worth of planting had been swept away by flood waters. 

 

Gladdy nosed at a bruised and battered sprout caught in the exposed roots of a giant elm in the corner of the plot. It was the only bit of green that remained in an otherwise mud-caked garden.  

 

John signaled to Gladdy who gently took up the seedling in her mouth, trotted over to her master, and dropped it in John’s extended hand.  She huffed softly and nuzzled John’s thigh as he inspected the ruined plant.  John – who couldn’t tell the difference between a zinnia and a peony even once they bloomed – recognized it as one of the hundred sunflower seedlings that Sherlock grew every winter and planted himself by hand along the inside of the stone walls every spring. _Helianthus annuus:_ the common sunflower, Valentine variety with primrose yellow petals and a chocolate centre. 

 

Anna’s flower.

 

_“She’s the sunlight, John,” Sherlock had said as he nuzzled the soft blonde curls of the newborn he held in his arms.  “The sunlight after the long, dark night.”_

_It was the most poetic thing John had ever heard Sherlock say, and though he was wrapped in the haze of the pain medication from the C-section that allowed him to bring Anna into the world, John felt such a surge of emotion well up in him that he thought his chest might burst from the joy of it._

_One of Sherlock’s large hands was curled protectively around her small head and his thumb caressed the tender skin of her cheek.   He rose from the bed where he had been sitting next to John and walked with the pup to the window. A few thin rays of the dawn managed to slip through the quickly dissipating London fog and shone into the room. Though she was only hours old and her deep blue eyes were weeks away from being able to focus on anything, Anna twisted in Sherlock’s arms and turned her face to the light._

_Sherlock smiled with utter delight.  “My sunflower,” he whispered, kissing her smooth forehead, and John fell in love with the man all over again._

 

The destruction of the rest of the garden would be a mild irritant to the Alpha, but Sherlock would be heartbroken when he learned that all the sunflowers were lost.

 

John pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his jeans, wrapped it around the infant rind, and tucked it carefully into the inside pocket of his hunting jacket.  He turned his attention to the dog at his feet.  “Sherlock won’t be pleased, will he, Gladdy?”

 

The Labrador’s ears perked forward and cocked her head at the question, but the message in Gladdy’s soft brown eyes was unmistakable.

 

_Ya think?_ it said.

 

John chuckled but there wasn’t much humor in it. He tapped his walking stick on the ground twice before setting off to finish his circuit of the downs, Gladstone at his heels. 

 

The pair had reached the entrance to the long, gravel paved drive when John felt it, the deep, repetitive thrumming that seemed to erupt from the earth beneath his feet even as it descended from the sky above.  The all-encompassing throb immediately sent John’s mind back to Camp Bastion and the memories of a thousand miles and a lifetime ago, though the vehicle that flew over John’s head, low along the terrain of The Downs, was more akin to something out of a Star Trek fantasy than the rotor-propelled Apache Longbows or Lynx he had known in Afghanistan.  Icarus-class helishuttles, though an increasing sight in the skies above London, were still uncommon enough to garner attention this far from Town, and John knew of only one person who would feel the need to bring one this far south.

 

“C’mon my girl,” John said to Gladstone as he increased his pace back to the cottage.  “Let’s see what brings Mycroft down to Sussex in such style so early on a Tuesday morning.”

 

A landing pad had been constructed in the clearing 100 metres beyond the cottage’s front gate three years ago when the government first began replacing its helicopters with Icarus shuttles. The small troop of MI-6 vetted engineers and contractors that descended on Holmes’ Grange for the fortnight it took to construct the pad had nearly driven Sherlock to distraction with their noise and frequent consultations, but the end result was one that met Mycroft’s needs – travel to Sussex by car was becoming increasingly difficult for both him and Greg, though neither would ever come out and directly admit it – but was still in keeping with the landscape of the property so that the dais and the path that led to it were largely camouflaged even when one looked out the upstairs windows. 

 

The skids of the vehicle had just touched down as John reached the front garden of the cottage.  Sherlock stood just outside the gate, his hands tucked in the pockets of the long, camel-coloured gardening coat he had exchanged for the beekeeper’s kit John had seen him in earlier.

 

 Sherlock looked down at John who had raised an eyebrow in silent query.

 

“I’ve no idea.  If I'd known he was coming, I’d have made sure I was in Aberdeen for the day,” Sherlock responded. 

 

John chuckled wryly, and turned his attention back to the craft.

 

“Not just Mycroft,” John said, more to himself than to Sherlock, and a chill that had nothing to do with the weather seeped into John’s bones.  Instinctively, he moved closer to his mate.   

 

The pair watched as one of three black-suited men assisted first Mycroft then Greg from the shuttle. The man solicitously held onto the elder’s arm until Greg could adjust his stance.  The cane Lestrade used was largely for balance, not support. The retired DCI’s stride was just as strong and determined as it had been in his younger years, and he walked shoulder to shoulder with his mate down the path toward the cottage as a third head emerged from within the shuttle.

 

“What is Ellie doing here?” Sherlock asked as his pregnant daughter followed her uncles; his gray eyes danced across the scene set before them in an attempt to suss out the answer to his own question.

 

An answer John suspected he already knew. The doctor had never come close to observing things in the way that came so naturally to Sherlock, but he _could_ read people and what he saw in the expressions of his family as they drew near caused John’s heart to stutter in his chest:  Mycroft’s countenance still and serious in a way John hadn’t seen in over a decade; Ellie’s haggard and stricken; but it was the look on Greg’s face – a look John had seen on the man countless times; a look Greg always wore when he told a parent that their pup had been killed – that had John reaching for Sherlock’s hand, gripping it tightly in his own.

 

“What is it?  John?  John!” Sherlock’s shout hastened the pace of their visitors as John’s legs nearly gave out beneath him.  Sherlock wrapped his long arms around John as wave after wave of distress flowed into Sherlock from the bond they shared; so riotous were John’s emotions that Sherlock could not discern the cause, but after a few moments, the Alpha was able to make sense of the words John was moaning repeatedly, a specific combination of words that Sherlock had heard John utter only once before, a combination he had hoped to never hear again.

 

Sherlock’s heart froze and his vision grew hazy at the periphery as his mind was assaulted by memories: the rain-dampened, blood-soaked pavement beneath his body; John’s warm fingers desperately seeking out a pulse he would not find; John’s cries of grief as he struggled against the hands that held him back from the man who would be his mate.

 

“Jesus, no … God, no!”

 

As Mycroft and Greg reached the pair, Sherlock pulled John closer into his chest, and he felt John’s arms wrap around him in response, each of them trying to shield the other from what was coming.

 

“Jake.”  John forced their son’s name past lips as numb as the rest of his body.

 

Mycroft and Greg shared a hesitant look. Ellie stood off to the side, equally uncertain.

 

“Brother ... John, ” Mycroft said after a moment, wishing that he could draw on Greg’s years of experience to keep his voice as calm and soothing as possible.  “I never wanted to ever have to say this to either of you, but … I’m – I’m so, so sorry. Anna was killed in combat when our base at Ruby Gap was overrun by Darwin rebels early this morning.”

 

 

 


End file.
